Abstract
The mass term connects a left-handed field to its right-handed partner, i.e., it is the term that flips the chirality of a particle. There are two possible mass terms, the Dirac mass term,
and the Majorana mass term,
, where \({\psi ^c} = C{\gamma ^0}{\psi ^*}\) is the charge-conjugated field of Ψ and \(\psi _L^c \equiv {\left( {{\psi _L}} \right)^c} = \frac{{\left( {1 + {\gamma _5}} \right)}}{2}{\psi ^c}\) has right-handed chirality. The former is the term \(m\bar \psi \psi \) that gives a mass to quarks and charged leptons. The latter obviously violates lepton-number conservation by two units and makes a particle and its antiparticle indistinguishable. (The classical experiment by Davis [94], who showed that \(\bar \nu + {}^{37}Cl \to {}^{37}A + {e^ - }\) does not take place, is interpreted as a virtue of the right-handed helicity of v̄ this test does not preclude the possibility of the Majorana neutrino.) As discussed in Sect. 5.1, a Major and mass term is allowed only for the neutrino. When neutrinos have a Majorana mass term, they are generally called “Majorana neutrinos.” This terminology is not quite accurate and a more precise definition is given in this chapter.
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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Fukugita, M., Yanagida, T. (2003). Massive Neutrinos. In: Physics of Neutrinos. Texts and Monographs in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05119-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05119-1_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-07851-4
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